Sometimes an old-fashioned, Nazi-killing romp is just what the movies need. And that’s exactly what “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare” brings to the cinema. The film, very loosely based on the real-life exploits of World War II British special operators, eschews politics in favor of humor, action, and plenty of Nazi-centric violence.
It tells the story of Operation Postmaster, a scheme to undermine the Nazi U-boat menace by interdicting some of the critical supplies that enabled them to prowl the Atlantic for months at a time, sinking the merchant vessels that kept Britain in the war. To do so, the motley crew that was the early British Special Operations Executive (SOE) was tasked to disrupt German supply lines by going after a key Italian tanker in the neutral Spanish port of Fernando Po, an island off the west coast of Africa.
The plot takes many action-oriented liberties with the historical facts — the death toll of Operation Postmaster was zero, compared to the scores of Nazi killings in the movie, for instance — but the changes keep the film moving forward at a highly enjoyable pace.
The film stars Henry Cavill as the semi-disgraced Major Gus March-Phillipps, potentially one of the real-life inspirations behind the character of James Bond, with his crew of talented misfits filled out by Captain Geoffrey Appleyard (Alex Pettyfer), the Danish commando Anders Lassen (Alan Ritchson), March-Phillipps’ Irish protégé Henry Hayes (Hero Fiennes Tiffin), and the demolitions expert Freddy Alvarez (Henry Golding).
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